Tuesday, May 07, 2013

Ok, so a fairly straight Kraftwerk cover isn't the most interesting thing to do in 2013, I agree. However there is a good reason for it. Some friends of mine up in Scotland put on a night where people were playing 'werk tracks totally live, which was set up as a response to a similar event in Cardiff, which was set up as a 'consolation' to the 99.99999% of fans who didn't get tickets for the concerts at the Tate Modern earlier in 2013. Still with me? I'd hoped to be able to attend and play something, but it didn't happen. Therefore I decided to record a cover version to play out over the P.A. system instead. Perhaps as people were leaving... This is that cover version.

As the main ethos behind the performances was that they were to be done totally live, with no sequencing or backing tracks, all parts on this were recorded totally 'manually'. Given my ultra-rudimentary keyboard prodding skills, this was no mean feat. Anyway, I think it came out quite well. Those bored already will probably have stopped reading ages ago. Those who care about what I used can read on...

There are 8 audio tracks here. The opening scale which turns into bleepy space noises was done on a Korg Monotribe, as was the drum track and little up/down octave line. The note change is achieved by setting the LFO to a square wave, carefully tuning the 'INT.' control and flipping the 'target' lever from VCF to VCO when needed. The drum hits were punched in and out in the process. At the same time, I was using the sync-out to trigger a Roland SH2 which I played the main bassline on. I really could have used some extra hands here, it took a few attempts to get through it without mistakes.

That was the 'machine assisted' part done. The SH2 was also used to play the main melody line, and the resonated lowish noisy notes. The pads are done on a Roland RS09 strings/organ unit, which was filtered slightly to make it sound a tad more interesting. Topping it off are the little spangly high notes, done on my Korg M500 Micropreset (which you might recognise the sound of from its' extensive use on the first couple of OMD albums). Final touch was to dig out my Commodore 64 and load up "Software Automatic Mouth" (or "SAM"), tell it what I wanted it to say and press return at the right moments. Mix it all together roughly, and...